Supporting small-scale fishers and fisheries makes more ecological, economic, nutritional, social, cultural and moral sense, according to social scientist and activist John Kurien, a Member of the ICSF Trust. He added that the justice and equity perspectives regarding the Blue Economy that have been well articulated by small-scale fisher organisations and their supporters, is gaining increasing significance.
Kurien was speaking at Session 8 (on policy opportunities) at the Closing Ceremony of the International Symposium on Fisheries Sustainability, held in Rome, Italy, during 18 to 21 November 2019, organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Kurien submitted that to achieve fisheries sustainability that will leave none behind, we must understand and take into serious consideration the experiential and concrete lived reality’ of fishing communities. They have been least responsible for climate changebut they are on ground zero and always the first to be affected by the unpredictable conditions and extreme events which Nature is ushering upon us in haste.
We need to reconcile cognitive scientific facts’ of global science with the collective responses spurred by the normative imaginations of fishing communities who deal with Nature on a day-to-day basis, Kurien added.
The following is the full text of his address:
Over the last three days, we have witnessed an impressive range of profound, formal keynotes and panel discussions dealing with the science-policy nexus to ensure fisheries sustainability. But I have also participated in the equally fruitful informal, personal dialogues and multilogues over coffee. I am sure some of you, after this Symposium is over, may rather reminisce over the cappuccino or expresso which launched a thousand ideas!
Friends, I wish to take the freedom of having the last word and situate what I have to say somewhere between the formal and the personal, between the academic and the experiential. Given the limited time, I will reflect upon just three realms, where I delve on the challenge of achieving inclusive sustainability, leaving none behind.
I have been a supporter of small-scale fisher people for over four decades. I have lived with, and worked for, them, in three countries, organizing co-operatives, unions, co-management initiatives and capacity-building programmes. I have also researched and advocated their cause internationally, as I do right now.
In most maritime countries, since the mid-1950s, the small-scale fisheries were neglected and shunned. This was done presumably to make the transition to a modernised large-scale fishing industry in the name of fisheries development. Today, seven decades later, in most countries around the world,small-scale fisheries continue to exist, and even thrive, despite this historical neglect and lack of support. In short, small-scale fisheries are still too big to ignore. Their enormous resilience and continued relevance are supported today by a considerable body of research studies worldwide.
Documents of international agencies, including, importantly, of FAO, have recently made clarion calls for support to small-scale fisheries, largely with the policy objective of alleviating poverty and supporting welfare needs. This orientation alone is inadequate because it then fails to perceive and appreciate many of the innate qualities of small-scale fisheries. We need new perspectives for the future.
Policy opportunities for supporting small-scale fishers must focus on very radically different reasons. This requires a deeper and more nuanced interpretation of the FAO Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines (SSF Guidelines).
Small-scale fisher people must be valorised:
— For their phenomenal vernacular ecological knowledge
This is the result of their intimate knowledge of natural processes, which yields a holistic understanding of the local aquatic ecosystems that they relate with regularly.
— For their innate contribution to biodiversity conservation through convivial technologies
This results from combining their vernacular ecosystem knowledge with their use of small, passive, seasonal, diverse, skill-intensive and convivial fishing craft-gear combinations.
— For their largely owner-operated and collegial harvesting, which fosters greater equity and comradery in work
This is the result of work being viewed as livelihood, and the resource as a shared heritage of the whole community.
— For their cost-effective and energy-efficient operations with lower the carbon footprint
This is possible because, compared to all other types of fishing, they incur far lower costs to harvest a unit of fish due to limited use of non-renewable energy.
— For their entrepreneurial prowess in making high private and social returns, despite limited means
This is a combined function of ecological knowledge, convivial technologies, energy-efficient operations and a collective work ethic that are embedded in the socio-cultural fabric of their communities.
— For their greater contribution to food security and wholesome nutrition for local rural consumers at affordable prices
This happens due to the relatively smaller harvests, creating shorter value chains, mostly reaching the immediate hinterlands where they operate. In short, production by the masses for consumption by the masses.
— For their generation of inclusive livelihoods –particularly among women — along these short value chains,
This is due to the customary and familial orientation of their occupation.
— For their provision of localised physical protection and security to coastal and riparian territory
This is made possible due to their spatially dispersed habitation and the ability to provide quick feedback about unusual events and activities.
— For their vital contributions to the economy of their countries
This arises from, inter alia, the considerable foreign exchange earned from their fresh harvests; the tourist revenues they incidentally promote; and the significant ancillary employment they generate — all with negligible state subsidies.
— For their protection of balanced life both below and above water
This is achieved by a commitment to socially, culturally and economically embedded management practices of their aquatic community commons. This creates a moral economy yielding greater socioeconomic well-being, balanced with income and gender equity.
The list is even longer. It is obvious that supporting small-scale fishers and fisheries makes more ecological, economic, nutritional, social, cultural and moral sense. However, implementing this support will require practical and sustained support from three sources:
First, there must be socio-political pressure emanating from the dispersed micro-level struggles and also from the numerous examples of small-scale fishers doing things differently. The world bodies of small-scale fishers and their supporters have a crucial role in this task of aggregating the examples to create a global lobby.
The second source comes from those committed researchers and scientists who have, over the last decades, diligently provided the solid scientific support for valorising small-scale fisheries worldwide. They must continue to persevere in their efforts to provide the synergistic push to goad the policymakers.
The third source comes from concerned national governments who must enact laws which will guarantee the rights and democratic space for small-scale fisheries to flourish.
Friends, we are trending into a future with exciting possibilities. People are becoming prosumers’ (at once producers and consumers); 3-D printing challenges the virtue of economies of scale; the marginal costs of information is falling drastically; science-intensive use of renewable energy is gaining rapid ground; the call for globalising localism, building creative commons, humanising the economy and making it generative, rather than extractive, grows stronger. Small-scale fishers and fisheries already imbibe many of these potentials and, given appropriate support and encouragement, can become trailblazers in the future. Rephrasing a narrative of La Via Campesina, they can become the best bet to feed the world (with fish) and cool the planet two of the biggest global concerns today and into the future.
My first stint of working with small-scale fishers was in the early 1970s in a village in Kerala, India. While I helped them to market their fish, I also listened eagerly to their narratives about the sea, the coast, the fish, the wind, the currents, the stars and the interrelationships between them. Much of their knowledge was encapsulated in pithy statements economy with words, but prodigious with meaning. Consider this: The sea starts in the mountains. Here is another: Sandy beaches make playgrounds for waves. From their frolic we divine the mood of the distant sea.
In November 2017, as a freak cyclone was brewing unannounced in the Arabian Sea, the elders in that village watched the manner in which the waves were breaking on the beach. They decided it would not be judicious to venture into the sea for the next few days.
However, in many southern villages, where the beaches were totally eroded and replaced with stone seawalls, the fishers were unable to watch the play of the waves. They set out to fish. Two days later, while fishing, they became hapless victims of the freak cyclone.
Even at the beginning of this millennium, the spectre of climate change was still viewed with some degree of cautious scepticism at national and international levels. In the words of author Amitav Ghosh, it is humanity’s great derangement that we refuse to grasp the scale and violence of climate change.
However, the experiential reality of extreme weather events and temperature change of the last two decades has resulted in a wider acceptance of an undeniable climate crisis looming large on land and at sea. And as Pope Francis reminded us, we must never forget that the natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has given us adequate warnings about the bleak future scenario, supported with hard scientific facts. Manuel Barange of FAO and others have eloquently articulated the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystem production in societies dependent on fisheries. There is no dearth of scientific facts, ominous warnings or ethical exaltations.
Friends, I submit that to achieve fisheries sustainability that will leave none behind, we must understand and take into serious consideration the experiential and concrete lived reality’ of fishing communities. They have been least responsible for climate change but they are on ground zero and always the first to be affected by the unpredictable conditions and extreme events which Nature is ushering upon us in haste.
We need to reconcile cognitive scientific facts’ of global science with the collective responses spurred by the normative imaginations of fishing communities who deal with Nature on a day-to-day basis.
People’s actions when encountering these sudden, emergent, place-based and local situations yield an accumulated wealth of experiential knowledge’. Sadly, this is not aggregated and transmitted up to the policy-making level.
We must explicitly recognize that scientific knowledge is not the only type of knowledge relevant to a sciencepolicy nexus. There are other types of knowledge local, indigenous, social, political, moral, religious and institutional which are also valid, exchanged and co-created.
Climate change is already spurring local-specific changes in fishery yields and species distribution. Fathoming these impacts will call for both good science and nuanced observation of local changes.
The FAO/UN, and, in our context, the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of FAO, is well positioned to create a bridging opportunity that will put together a credible and inclusive research process and science-technology studies which will encompass relations between laboratory-scientists and those neglected barefoot worker-scientists — our vastly knowledgeable fisherfolk.
Such collaborative ventures within countries will lead to co-evolution, and joint construction of knowledge, resulting in a visible difference in the lives of millions of ordinary fisher people, yielding greater fisheries sustainability in the age of climate change.
I have only one grandchild. A beautiful and charming girl. She loves fish. She is fascinated by the sea. She belongs to the generation of Greta Thunberg.
Once she learns to speak up which she will she may want to ask us: Will your numerous debates and discussions about the Blue Economy include your moral obligation towards meand many children like me yet to be born to have enough fish to eat, and access to bountiful and clean seas to frolic in and enjoy?
Friends, the social, cultural and moral aspects of human society should extend beyond one’s lifetime. But there is a contradiction in not wanting to discriminate against future generations and, at the same time, giving priority to those who are living now. In other words, you cannot save the fish for the future and eat it all now.
This concept was well understood by the Urhobo people of the Niger Delta who say resources belong to the dead, the living and those yet to be born., a truth which we have forgotten but will surely be part of the concern of the next generation.
If we accept this position, then we are obliged to stand by the claim of future generations to the resources of the planet, and be mindful of our own present consumption patterns. As Mahatma Gandhi said, the resources of our planet are adequate for everyone’s needs but not everyone’s greed.
Friends, it is for this reason that the justice and equity perspectives regarding the Blue Economy that have been well articulated by small-scale fisher organisations and their supporters, gain significance. While we rightly stress the issue of human rights for today, we also need to think beyond, and raise, the matter of trans-generational access and use of resources from the oceans.
By delving into this question, I believe there is a big policy opportunity for the FAO to spearhead the normative agenda for trans-generational justice into the Blue Economy debates.We must give the welfare of future generations weight in our economic and moral decisions of today. Once again, in Gandhi’s words, the future depends on what we do in the present.
Friends, this being the last keynote, in conclusion, allow me to take the freedom to reflect on policy prescriptions and policy implementation. For this I will use advise given long ago which continues to be fitting and relevant even today.
Two thousand years ago, there lived a poet and policy advisor from my country, India, called Thiruvalluvar. Judging from his lyrical descriptions about boats and the sea, we may surmise he was a man of the coast.
He wrote three books containing over a thousand short couplets of advice called the Thirukkural.
These gems of counsel were set afloat on the waters of world literature by an Italian Jesuit, Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi. In the 18th century Beschi translated two of the books Book of Virtue and Book of Wealth — from Tamil into Latin. Perhaps, in keeping with his position in the church, he deemed it appropriate to keep the third book away from the readership of his time! It was titled Book of Love!
Let me end by quoting a few lines from the Thirukkural. The first quotation, I think, applies to me and to all of us keynote speakers who make policy prescriptions:
Easy it is to speak, easy to lecture and preach
But hard, so very hard, the preached goals to reach
(Thirukkural Verse 664)
The second quotation, I think is appropriate to the FAO Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, which is primarily tasked with implementing the many suggestions and policy guidelines provided in this Symposium:
Deliberations must end in decision
Else they are a ramble
Decide after due reflection
And after that act, not amble
(Thirukkural Verse 671)
Thank you very much for your patient hearing.
http://www.fao.org/webcast/home/en/item/5150/icode/
2019 ICSF